THE INNER LIFE

If you want to be rich
stop chasing after the things of the world.
Go inside.
What you will find will stop you dead
and you will want no more. 

This is the essence of most, if not all, spiritual teachings.  The real riches lie in the kingdom within, yet many people live their whole lives not knowing how to find them.  Their energies are absorbed in the outer world, keeping up with the demands of a busy life.  The only inner life they know is really the inside lining of the outer life, for it consists almost entirely of their emotional and mental involvement with the world around them. 

There is another inner life.   We may enter through this surface layer, but it goes far, far beyond that.  It is concerned not so much with the ups and downs of our personal life, but with our deeper relationships with Life and Spirit.  It is concerned with an inner nature that is the ground of everything.

Although the culture at large does not support this inner life, there is growing interest in it.  The marketplace is booming with books, classes, and workshops, all designed to satisfy our hunger.  And yet the responsibility lies with each of us.  We cannot purchase enlightenment any more that our ancestors could purchase salvation.  We need to learn how to re-source our inner life by once more making our way to the source of it. 

It is a long journey with many paths, some straight and narrow, others circular and inclusive.  If you want the straight and narrow, I suggest you find a spiritual teacher and make this your life.  For most of us, that won’t work.  We take what may look like (and be) a longer route, but the changes we make are broad and sweeping.  We’re not necessarily in a hurry.  The goal is not just to get enlightened, but to self-actualize as well.

Two Journeys

In a sense, there are two journeys: one to find ourselves and one to lose ourselves.  Of course it is not that simple.  At different levels, the truth looks different, which is why the teachings of sages like Ramana Maharshi at times sound contradictory.  Many of Ramana’s teachings are a record of his responses to questions asked by various seekers. His answers were tailored to the individual needs and consciousness of the questioner.  Just as the view from the mountain looks different from different vantage points, so too the view of reality varies according to what level of consciousness one is relating to. 

This is why the relationship between these two journeys is difficult to describe.  Some would say they are really one journey and be correct.  Others claiming the same thing would not be correct because they would mean something quite different by it.  Because I think there is more harm right now in equating the two processes than in differentiating them, I am emphasizing the distinction. 

Many of the popular books on spiritual growth today are more about finding yourself and expanding that self than the ruthless task of losing yourself.  Self-actualization, which can be defined as fulfilling all of one’s unique human potential, becomes confused with Self-Realization, defined as knowing your true identity as the more Universal Self.  Actually I don’t like the word Self in this context because it is so intricately wed in most of our minds with the sense of individual identity.  We might better describe this Self as the  Suchness, the Beingness, the Isness that constitutes everything.

The first journey is the process of individuation.  When we realize what this really involves, we see that few complete this journey.  Few break free from the conditioning of the past to fully and completely express their unique being.  So it is fitting that much of our collective attention, as well as the fields of psychology and personal growth, should be concerned with shepherding people through this process. 

Much of what I say about contemplative life can be applied to this first journey.  Making space to be with oneself, examining the issue of identity, practice being more open and more present, learning to tolerate stillness and to let go of control—all of these are useful to the process of becoming a more authentic person.

They are also useful to the second journey.  By becoming more open and more present, for example, we come into deeper contact with the larger Being which allows us to recognize that we are not the identity we carry around inside our heads.  This helps us let go of that identity and know that we are not truly separate from the larger unity, which is exactly what the second journey is about.  In a similar fashion, learning to tolerate stillness not only helps us face ourselves more squarely (the first journey), but takes us beyond the activity of the ego; and without that activity, the ego falls away (the second journey).  So the same process serves both ends depending how deeply we go with it.

It could be said that both journeys culminate in knowing who you really are, yet they do not point to the same thing. In the first journey, what we discover is the authentic person without mask or self-limitation.  In the second journey we learn that any such identity is still only part of the picture.  We are not just this human person freely being herself.  That is still the outer skin.  We are something much more eternal and mysterious, something which can change into almost any form and still be true to itself.  It is hard for the mind to grasp an identity that is independent of the particulars of our life.   It helps if you can let go of your mind a little bit and try to feel from your body and your heart.

The first journey is familiar to us.  In many ways, it is a self-improvement project.  We can use our usual motivations and strategies to get behind it.  The second journey, in contrast, is a radical departure. We must let go of almost everything we know, every familiar way of being.  It is a complete metamorphosis. There is a paradox here: It is totally radical yet can lead to an outer life that looks totally ordinary.

In many Buddhist teachings, we hear the idea that after enlightenment what is left is chopping water and carrying wood.  We don’t disappear into the ethers, but return to the chores of daily life more embodied.  We come into our bodies and sensation in a way that allows us to really experience them.  The commentary—the story we impose on life—is gone, and what is left is simply what is. To some people this seems to imply that the experience of pure sensation is the totality of spiritual life.  This is not how I experience it. When I am in deeper states, I sometimes feel a fine presence that pervades everything, and I am in contact with vast dimensions inside of me—or which I enter by going inside.  It is hard to tell sometimes what is inside and what is outside, or which world is more real, although I see that the outer world is but an expression of this invisible reality.  Chopping wood and carrying water, I can be present to the wood and the water, to my hands and my feet, and I can also be present to the formless essence that makes the universe sing. 

The Route Home

The two journeys contain many roads.  The journey to find ourselves includes personal growth work, psychotherapy, education, relationship, parenting, career, interests, spiritual community, and much more.  Often, it follows the shape of our life. The first journey is therefore broad and inclusive.

The second journey is not.  It whittles us down rather than builds us up.We are losing structure rather than gaining it.  In the second journey, it doesn’t really matter what you do for a living, how fulfilling your relationships are, what temple you pray in.  It doesn’t matter what you wear.  (In the first journey there can be a lot of experimentation around personal style and appearance.) The second journey strips us of all that.  In some sense, we are stripped of our individuality—or what we have taken as our individuality.  We give up many of the outer distinctions, not because they are bad and should be extinguished, but because they are not our true being.  This is not to suggest that our true being is some homogenous mush where everyone is the same.  There is a uniqueness that the mind cannot anticipate and which can only be known when we come upon it in our inner travels. 

What is this reducing diet?  What can whittle us away like this?  Hard spiritual work.  This doesn’t necessarily mean twelve hours on a meditation cushion with a Zen master whacking you on the back.  It doesn’t require a guru who throws your ego onto the ground and humiliates you.  It doesn’t necessarily come with years of selfless service.  Any of these might be part of your path, but there are gentler ways as well.

What I am describing in this book is the entrance ramp to a contemplative lifestyle that can fit into the modern world, that honors individual differences, and that is true to the natural intelligence that is operating through the universe and in each person who knows how to get out of the way and listen.  Contemplation is about listening.  It is not about ordering God around, not about creating rituals to manifest your desires, not about secret formulas for spiritual transformation.  Contemplation is the yin of spiritual life.  It is the receptive side of things. 

Thus it is not about controlling, but about giving up control; not about knowing, but about entering the way of unknowing;  not about getting more but about giving up everything that stands between you and the no-thing-ness of your true nature.  The mystical way of expressing it would be to say it is about giving yourself to the Beloved, surrendering everything between you and God.

Such terms are stark and demanding, and I don’t want to scare people.  When you’re feeling mystical passion, you want to give everything; before this, you may just want a quieter life, to recognize the spiritual in the commonplace, to find solace in silence.  It is enough. 

 The Fruits of Contemplative Life

Creating a contemplative life is not a starvation diet.  A bounty of fruits lines the path all along the way. 

One of the first fruits is the sense of spaciousness that comes when we stop filling all of our time. Because we are not racing, we have a sense of more leisure.  We slow down and smell the flowers. As we break free of our conditioning and listen to our own rhythms, we enjoy of a sense of harmony and flow.  We feel more balanced because we are not run by the requirements of outer life alone but have also begun to cultivate an inner life.  We come back to ourselves.  What a relief!  We step out of the haze of our thoughts and come into the moment.  In a word, we become “present.”

From this sense of presence, along with a growing sense of connection, comes the feeling of more meaning and, at the same time, less need to articulate what that meaning is.  We are not living for something that is down the road.  The meaning is right here, in the moment.

Unresolved feelings may rise to the surface as we sit and face ourselves, but we know that this is the road to peace.  We are no longer running away.  We are here facing the good and the bad, learning to hold it all. 

These are juicy fruits, rewards enough for our changes.  But they are not all. As we deepen into the second journey, we find an even more abundant harvest.    Most of these fruits come as we release the small self.  It is like stepping out of a tin suit, free at last to be and move without constriction. A whole new dimension of being opens up inside of us.  We come home, our hearts overflowing with gratitude.  The fruits of our own essential nature are more wondrous and delectable than we could hope for, the sweetness of our own nature and the sweetness of divine nature, one luscious ecstasy.

Am I exaggerating?  Not at all.  The language may seem flowery, but the riches are far greater than even the most superlative descriptors.  I don’t mean to imply that it is all some kind of honeyed bliss.  There are deserts to cross, times of great aridity and discouragement, times when we are terrified.  But the fruits most certainly are there, and the fruits are real.

They liberate in us a love that transforms us, giving us new eyes through which we view the world.  Here is a poem about this experience from my book, Freefall to the Beloved. 

  New Eyes

Running through the village

embracing everyone she meets,

she laughs in ecstasy.

People call her mad.

“New eyes!” she cries.

“I have been given new eyes!”

And it is true.

For the scales which had previously blinded her

are gone now, erased

revealing such utter glory

that her mind took flight,

leaving only a rapturous heart

in an old, weathered body

racing through the streets

on fire with love.